We get signal!

I’ve had no luck getting wifi signal any distance outside of the house, no matter where in the house I’ve situated wireless access points or which of the basic residential antennae I’ve tried to use.

Last week’s goat health drama highlighted how nice it would be to have cameras in the shed (not that it would have changed anything, but just for peace of mind and easier monitoring), and I know I want to get access to sensor data from things like the root cellar and the (mostly) passive solar winter chicken waterer I’m building next.

So I finally took the plunge, did a bit of research, and installed proper outdoor wifi and a real antenna. I mounted a Ubiquiti PicoStation with an 8db outdoor antenna (connected with this cable) to the pole that conveniently was already mounted to the top of the chimney, and voila!

We now have signal more than everywhere I needed it to be. Here’s a very unscientific view of it – the green areas I explicitly verified, the red dots are places I had failed tests, and the question marks are not-yet-tested areas that I suspect probably do have signal.